<h1>4C. Adapt your strategic plan</h1>
<p>Collecting and analyzing data as part of routine monitoring activities allow you to determine
how effective your interventions are and what you need to do to adjust your project to reach
your goals and objectives more efficiently. As the final part of this step, you need to use
what you have learned during the analyses and discussions to modify and optimize your
activities. This is the essence of adaptive management.</p>
<p>All the planning that you did earlier was not meant to be a one-time event, never to be
revisited or used again. Instead, in order to learn over time and to continue to improve the
effectiveness of your project, you must revisit and adjust your project parameters and core
assumptions, action plan, monitoring plan, operational plan, work plan and budget.
Therefore, you may need to update all sections of your strategic plan to reflect what you have
learned. As you make changes, you should also document the rationale behind them so that
others will understand what you learned and why you made these changes.</p>
<p>When updating your strategic plan, you should also incorporate findings from analyses done
outside of your project team. For example, if your project has undergone a formal evaluation
or audit (see Step 5C), you should examine the findings and see how you can use them to
adapt and improve your project and your strategic plan.</p>
Output for this standard practice includes:
<ul><li>Revised project documents (including action plan, monitoring plan, operational
plan, work plan, and budget).</li></ul>
